Everybody knows, recruitment is an important activity during bootstrapping or expanding a company. Bad recruits lead to bad result. At a worst point it can make a company collapse. I am not a HR expert here, but I do have some point to notice on recruitment process.

1. Not knowing what you want. “Needed a network administrator capable of managing Windows based Server and Linux based server. Must be able to program in shell, PHP, and HTML/CSS. Can manage MySQL, Postgre and SQL Server. Web 2.0 savvy”. I’m sure you have seen better example of “not knowing what you want” vacancy. Those kind of vacancy implicitely tell us that the company has minmal direction of where to go. Not knowing where to go means you don’t know who you want to go with, no? If you want to put off a fire, why brought a pyromaniacs?
2. Not knowing where to find. Fish lives in the water. Birds fly in the sky. Every kind of people, in common, live (near) where they want to live. if you want a FOSS evangelist, jump into FOSS community. If you don’t have it in your town, look for it somewhere else.
3. Not knowing what to offer. Everybody has their own wishlist. However, the path will likely follow “want adequity”, and then “want satisfaction”. Salary will lilkely the first priority to check.
4. Not knowing when to reject applicant. Bad recruits lead to bad result. Don’t force yourself to accept bad seed. And note to differ potential seed with actual bad seed. Potetial seed grows, bad seed don’t.

Now, all HR, on your combat station. Good recruit will remove above paintings from your company/office!

Photo: Cappellmeister